The Phill Musra Group: Creator Spaces

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Phill Musra (fl, ts, ss, zurna, perc)
Hüseyin Ertunc (d, cymbals)
Michael Cosmic (as)

Label:

Intex 1974

September/2013

You know where you are with an album featuring someone calling himself Michael Cosmic and a track called ‘The Creator Is So Far Out’ – deep in post-Coltrane spiritual free-jazz territory. In the early 1970s, American twin brothers Musra and Cosmic, operating on the fringes of the Boston scene, were joined on a few sessions by Turkish multi-instrumentalist – and AACM associate – Hüseyin Ertunc, spawning a handful of now impossibly rare LPs like this one. Twin flutes writhe and intertwine, while Ertunc lays down rumbling toms and cymbal splashes. The high and strangled cry of the Turkish zurna – a traditional Anatolian woodwind instrument – duels with low, grumbling, Ra-ish organ squiggles while the drums quietly seethe. Each of these four tunes operates in a rudimentary framework: a brief, fanfare-like head; 10 minutes or so of free-from freak-out and a neat return to the theme, all done with a deceptive economy and clarity. Far out, indeed.

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